Morn
"You know Morn, he never shuts up." : - Quark ( ) Morn was a Lurian who was a frequent patron of Quark's and his best customer. He was known to be highly talkative, and enjoyed a wide variety of alcoholic beverages. Morn owned a shipping business that specialized in the transport of various mundane cargos. ( ) Lissepian Mother's Day Heist Morn was one of five thieves who stole 1,000 bricks of gold-pressed latinum from the Central Bank of Lissepia in the Lissepian Mother's Day Heist of 2365. Morn deposited the bricks in the Bank of Bolias and stored the latinum in his second stomach, causing most of his hair to fall out. ( ) Life on Deep Space 9 The first time Morn walked into Quark's was around 2364, a time when he still had his hair. Quark thought he was just another customer passing through, when he sat down in what would soon be known as "his stool". Little did Quark know he would become such an important figure in his life, and to his bar. ( ) After the Cardassians retreated from Bajor in 2369, Morn remained on Deep Space 9, which was then under Federation control. Morn spent most of his time at Quark's, becoming his most reliable customer and occasional business partner (notably in an attempt to setup an illegal Cardassian Vole fighting ring; he was discovered painting numbers on the voles, and the operation was stopped). ( ) In 2370, with his freighter rendered inoperable during a warp core retrofit, Morn was seen evacuating the station on the last available runabout, the , during the short-lived Bajoran coup. ( ) In 2371, Morn sat near Tom Paris in Quark's and watched as Quark tried to scam Ensign Harry Kim into buying worthless Lobi crystals, which Quark said he got from a strange creature called a "Morn". ( ) Odo saved Morn from becoming a victim of illegal search and seizure by a belligerent Klingon posse on the Promenade, who asked Morn "...what he was doing so far away from the Ionite Nebula". ( ) Quark even let Morn run the bar temporarily while he was on a trip to Earth in 2372. ( ) ]] In the weeks leading up to the Dominion War, Morn went berserk after hearing Quark's prediction of the coming doom. He hit Quark with a barstool, and ran out of the bar and through the Promenade, screaming "We're all doomed!" He then ran into the Bajoran shrine, stark naked, and began crying to the Prophets for protection. ( ) , however.| }} During the Dominion's control of Terok Nor, Morn took a trip to see his mother on her birthday, and brought an encoded message to Captain Benjamin Sisko from the resistance forces on the station, containing vital information about the Cardassians' timetable for disabling the minefield blocking the Bajoran wormhole from the Dominion's forces in the Gamma Quadrant. When Admiral Ross questioned whether the message was reliable, Sisko responded that he had known Morn for five years, and trusted him. Morn's actions spurred the Federation to launch Operation Return, thereby saving the Alpha Quadrant. ( ) Morn attended the pre-wedding party thrown by Jadzia Dax in her quarters. He almost got into a fight with a Bolian, but the two managed to work things out. He eventually passed out behind the couch, leaving the following morning with an obvious hangover. ( ) In mid-2374, Morn went away on a business trip, leaving a shipment of Livanian beets in Cargo Bay 3. The previous time Morn went away, Quark's sales dropped almost five per cent. So, while he was gone, Quark created a hologram of the Lurian because his bar was incomplete without him. People loved Morn, and he felt that he was a mascot – everyone who came into the bar expected to see him, and if they didn't it didn't feel like home – which wasn't good for Quark's business. After a period of over two weeks, the beets Morn had left in the cargo bay began to rot, causing Odo to seek him out in Quark's and ask that he remove them from the cargo bay. At the time, however, Morn was gone, and Quark had placed the hologram of the Lurian at "his stool", temporarily fooling Odo, to Quark's delight. Moments later, Quark got word that Morn's cargo ship had been caught in an ion storm, where he had died. Following Morn's memorial, Quark learned from Benjamin Sisko, who unsealed Morn's will, that everything of Morn's was left to Quark: four cargo containers of beets, a mud bath "bed", a painting of a matador, and one-thousand bricks of gold-pressed latinum (in assay office locker 137). It was later determined that Morn faked his own death, after the statute of limitations ran out against the Lissepian Mother's Day Heist, in order to throw his fellow thieves off his trail. In return for Quark's assistance in getting the four other thieves off of his back, he offered Quark a quantity of the latinum that he had hidden in his second stomach. ( ) In an alternate future he attended the memorial service for Benjamin Sisko on the promenade. He also ran Quark's in 2405, with the station under Klingon control. In 2422 he still runs the bar, which was named Morn's. Julian Bashir mentioned that Dax, Nog, and Jake Sisko could visit Morn's for a drink. ( ) Personal Life Morn had seventeen brothers and sisters. ( ) Although he owned his own ship, Morn kept his quarters aboard Deep Space 9. His quarters were exceptionally spartan, containing a 'hot tub' of mud, where he slept, and a painting of a matador. ( ) Morn was quite the ladies' man, and was often seen with a beautiful woman by his side. Morn once asked out Starfleet officer Jadzia Dax, who declined. She did say she thought he was cute, ( ) and, prior to 2372 later admitted that she used to have a little crush on him. As she explained it, however, he wasn't interested. ( ) Morn was also attracted to several other females aboard the station and was frequently seen flirting with some such as a Bajoran woman who received a hand kiss from him ( ) as well as a female Kobheerian. ( ) He also enjoyed playing dabo, but couldn't get the hang of darts. ( ) He and Worf frequently sparred, having weekly combat in the holosuite. Worf thought that he was an excellent sparring partner. ( ) Appendices Appearances * ** (Season One) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Two) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Three) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Four) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Five) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Six) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** (Season Seven) ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** * * Background * Morn was played by actor Mark Allen Shepherd, who first appeared in . In the episode , Shepherd, without the Morn makeup, briefly appeared as the Bajoran customer whom Quark asks to fill Morn's seat. * Morn was first identified by name in (although his name had previously been used in the scripts for and ) and by species in "Who Mourns for Morn?". * "Morn" is an anagram for , the barfly played by in the TV show . (Star Trek Encyclopedia) The manner in which Dax shouts his name upon seeing the hologram at Quark's is reminiscent of the greeting Norm would usually receive as soon as he walked into Cheers. * It is possible that Morn was androgynous since Odo, while making an announcement to passers-by on the Promenade of Deep Space 9, said "Ladies and gentlemen (notices Morn walking by) ... and all androgynous species..." It is reasonable to assume Odo was making a joke at Morn's expense, though given Odo's apparent lack of a sense of humor and the gravity of the situation, he could have been serious. The former seems to be true since Morn was referred to as he/him in subsequent episodes. * Before the series was aired, Morn was simply known by staff as "the Grinch". Mark Shepherd almost did not become Morn. Despite being hired for the role, the production crew accidentally left him off the calling list when they began filming "Emissary". By what Shepherd claims was intuition, he decided one day to wander onto the Paramount lot and see what was going on. Coincidentally that very day, Morn was to be filmed. Shepherd's contribution impressed the producers so much, he was made a recurring character. (The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) * Aside from Mark Allen Shepherd, Dennis Madalone is the only stunt performer or actor to have portrayed Morn. In there is one stunt scene in which Morn is thrown from his bar stool by Worf. * Morn's prosthetic head was sculpted by Vincent Niebla, http://www.vn-productions.com/special_effects_makeup.html who won an Emmy for his work at only 21 years of age. http://www.vn-productions.com/vn_bio.html * According to Michael Westmore, Morn's headpiece's mouth was designed so as to allow Mark Allen Shepherd to speak should the need arise. However, Morn never spoke a single word throughout all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. (Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Four, DS9 Season 4 DVD, Special Features) * According to Mark Shepherd, over the years a number of episodes were written during which Morn spoke various snippets of dialog, but his lines were always removed by the time the script was being shot. In one particular example, Morn was to come down the spiral staircase in Quark's wearing a tuxedo, having been in the holosuite using the Julian Bashir, Secret Agent holoprogram. Quark is mixing a drink for Morn at the bar, and Morn looks over at him and says, " ." This scene remained through a number of script rewrites, to the point that Shepherd (in full Morn makeup) was actually fitted for a tuxedo, but at the last minute, the scene was removed. ("Morn Speaks", DS9 Season 7 DVD, Special Features) Shepherd also speculated, in a 1996 interview for Star Trek Monthly, that Morn would probably speak the last line of the series – but that was ultimately spoken by Quark. * A character named Morn owns a pub in the fantasy book series by . The shared name is apparently a coincidence. * In the German version of the episode , Morn "speaks": he utters 2 short grunts which are not in the original version. * Along with Quark, Q, Broik and Evek, he is one of only five characters to appear in all three Star Trek series based in the 24th century: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. * Morn is one of five characters to appear in two series premieres ( and ), the others being Quark, Jean-Luc Picard, Broik and Miles O'Brien. * With 92 appearances, Morn is in more episodes of Deep Space Nine than Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton), a regular cast member with only 85 appearances. Apocrypha In the short story "Mirror Eyes," in the anthology Tales of the Dominion War, the narrator, a Romulan Tal Shiar agent working undercover aboard DS9, identifies Morn as the only inhabitant of the station with whom she feels "an intellectual kinship." External links * * * * Morn at Mornopedia - A Mornography, Fan project of Morn's appearances in DS9 and other Trek-shows de:Morn fr:Morn nl:Morn es:Morn Category:Lurians Category:Deep Space 9 residents Category:Terok Nor residents